


Prologue: In the Shadow of the Ruins

by shefrommo



Series: Four Great Church-Bells (The Outliers) [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, Prologue of Four Great Church-Bells, Starts years before chapter one did, a series consisting of outside POV characters, part one of the Outliers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-25
Updated: 2020-06-25
Packaged: 2021-03-04 06:34:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24919177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shefrommo/pseuds/shefrommo
Summary: 5,000 years ago, humanity staged a successful rebellion against their gods. Now, all that's left are four bells, a tablet containing a related prophecy, and four humans with monsters sleeping under their skin.Hector Torinetti is in his forties and leading an expedition through Atlantis. It was, is, and always will be the highlight of his career, but he might have gotten more answers about the ruins had he found a way into the library.Part one of Four Great Church-Bells (The Outliers) and Prologue to the work as a whole.
Series: Four Great Church-Bells (The Outliers) [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1803307





	Prologue: In the Shadow of the Ruins

**Author's Note:**

> This will eventually be the prologue to a completed work, but for now it's not much. I hope you enjoy it all the same!

Prologue: In the Shadow of the Ruins  
Part one of Four Great Church-Bells (The Outliers)

A group of archeologists traveled slowly through the ruins. They were careful with their feet and hands, checking and doublechecking every step. For five thousand years, this place and its treasures had withstood the test of time; the researchers did not want to be the reason some fragile object fell apart underfoot.

The leader of the group, a handsome man named Hector Torinetti, looked around, unnerved. He, like his compatriots, had noticed how eerie the place was. Despite being on the coast of Therasia, there was no sign of life in the ruins—no algae, no lichen, not even a single crab stuck in a tidepool.

Locals had long noticed that there was no sign of life on this end of the island. Perhaps that was because it was largely a rocky cliff here, but one would expect some seagulls or similar birds to be nesting on the cliff. Yet, there wasn’t the slightest sign that anything lived here. On the surface, the grass stopped abruptly over a mile away, a strangely perfect line that had not once been broken in living memory. Attempts to break it saw the plants dying only days after their planting. There was nothing wrong with the soil, as several tests had proven. By all means, it should have been fertile land. 

The discovery of the ruins had come as an accident. Some kid had tried to go rock climbing on the cliff face and had come across an overhang that sat over a little plateau. The kid had stopped for a break and noticed that there seemed to be a structure carved out of the rock but had been too uneasy to venture inside. Instead, pictures had been taken, posted to social media, and the climb resumed. The site might have been forgotten entirely had someone not asked where that ledge was, and then showed the pictures to a friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend who happened to be an archeologist.

The end result was a distinctly unnerving set of ruins. There was no sign of life, even though the shelf was cool and dark enough that moss should grow. The area felt cramped although a high ceiling had been carved out of the rock above, matching gothic cathedrals with its soaring heights. Sound was muffled inside—experimental shouts didn’t produce an echo and were barely heard five feet away. One of the archeologists remarked uneasily that it felt like the site of a horror movie massacre. The comparison was apt. 

The team of researchers picked their way towards their preferred dig site—a large empty room that seemed to have either been a storage facility or a room of worship. Four great bells sat in the center; a tablet inscribed with an unfamiliar script behind them. As Torinetti directed his coworkers deeper inside, they passed by a collapsed entryway. Had they found a way inside, they would have discovered a library stocked with millennia-old clay tablets recording the purpose of the site.

If they had been able to translate the tablets, they would have found that each had the same message, repeated with only mild variation: “Attempt [number] to seal the Horseman Death unsuccessful. Vessel [number] deceased after [number] [time period].” Only the last tablet, stacked on top of several others read differently. It displayed the message “Attempt 423 to seal the Horseman Death successful. Vessel 423 survived sealing with no injuries or ill effects. Test of harvested power resulted in the deaths of all non-Vessel life in a one-dolichos radius. Sealing procedure will be released to the public to encourage the sealing of the remaining three Horsemen. Vessel 423 will abstain from the war to avoid inducing greater casualties on humanity’s side.”

**Author's Note:**

> For the continuation, read "When the Bell Thunders" in the series Four Great Church-Bells (Red Sun of Carnage). More will eventually be published in the Outliers series, but they will not be in chronological order. Another series will eventually be the compilation of everything in chronological order.
> 
> In other news, Therasia is an actual island that is--at least, according to Wikipedia--a potential site of Atlantis, along with its sister island, Santorini/Thera. A dolichos is an ancient Greek unit of measurement that is approximately equivalent to one mile, give or take a few feet.


End file.
